Video

Banquet speech

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen: Robert Kennedy once said, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” Those words reveal a deep truth about Kennedy: he was an economist at heart – startling though that may…

more

Banquet speech

Eders Majestäter, Eders Kungliga Högheter, Mina damer och herrar Jag vill tacka för äran att vara här, tacka Svenska Akademien, tacka svenska folket och jag vill också tacka skogen. It’s a great pleasure, it’s a great honour to be with you tonight, and I acknowledge this honour which is done to me…

more

Prose

English Excerpt from Onitsha The Surabaya, an aging three-hundred-ton ship of the Holland Africa Line, had just left the dirty waters of the Gironde estuary, bound for the west coast of Africa, and Fintan looked at his mother as if it were for the first time. Perhaps he had never before realized…

more

Nobel Lecture

English 7 December, 2008 In the forest of paradoxes Why do we write? I imagine that each of us has his or her own response to this simple question. One has predispositions, a milieu, circumstances. Shortcomings, too. If we are writing, it means that we are not acting. That…

more